Sinema-backed bill addresses shortage of doctors and nurses, with potential to increase access and cut wait times for patients in Arizona and across the country
WASHINGTON – Arizona senior Senator Kyrsten Sinema cosponsored the Healthcare Workforce Resilience Act – bipartisan legislation allowing unused visas from prior years to be used by doctors and nurses who can help meet ongoing health care staffing challenges in Arizona and across the country.
“Increasing the number of trained health care professionals will help address the shortage of doctors and nurses in Arizona and across the country – increasing Arizonans’ access to health care,” said Sinema.
The bipartisan Healthcare Workforce Resilience Act, introduced by Democratic Senator Dick Durbin (Ill.) and Republican Senator Kevin Cramer (N.D.), would be critically helpful in increasing the number of medical professionals caring for Arizona patients – especially in Arizona’s rural communities that face difficulties attracting doctors and nurses.
The Sinema-backed bipartisan, bicameral legislation would recapture up to 40,000 previously unused visas and make them temporarily available to nurses and doctors – 25,000 of those visas would be reserved for nurses and 15,000 for doctors. The unused visas are from the accumulation of annually allocated and capped immigrant visas that were authorized under immigration law, but were not used in the year they were allocated. The bipartisan legislation would not increase current immigration numbers and will not displace American workers.